Lemme try to explain it to you in a different way: You’re not “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” — you’re the Washington part. We need a Mr. Smith to mess with you. You’re not on a mission you reluctantly accepted, like the old farts in “Space Cowboys.” You campaigned for this job, and now you’re doing it again.

And having been the Grand Poobah for three years, it’s a little late to be selling yourself as some fish-out-of-water cowboy visiting the big city on assignment. You’re not McCloud, you’re the grandson of a senator and the son of a president and CIA director. For 15 of the last 22 years you’ve had a key to the White House. The last thing that happened in Washington without the Bushes getting a piece of it was Marion Barry’s crack habit. “The Exorcist” happened in Georgetown, but Satan had to run it by Jim Baker first.

So knock off the regular-guy act — and by the way, that also goes for John Forbes Kerry, the other white meat. Two Skull and Bones preppies, these guys are, from Nantucket and Kennebunkport, who use the word “summer” as a verb and probably had monogrammed beer bongs in college.

Please, John Kerry: Stop rolling up your sleeves at campaign rallies like you’re about to man a register at Costco. You’re a Boston Brahmin who married not one but two eccentric heiresses — you’re not Joe Sixpack, you’re Claus von Bulow. I think your current wife is great, but hello, she inherited the Heinz fortune! She’s the ketchup lady! — which explains why sometimes he’s gotta smack her on the bottom to get her to come.

Look, fellas, we’ve got almost eight months till the election. That’s a long time to hold in your gut. To pretend you’re something you’re not. Let’s just be real and admit that finally, and unfortunately, true class warfare has come to America.

Yale class of ’66 vs. Yale class of ’68.

Sorry, but responding only to people who look and sound like you is small-minded, so if Southerners don’t want to have an inferiority complex, I say, “Stop doing things that make reasonable people think you’re inferior!”

Like, getting rid of slavery was a good start. But don’t quit there: Stop being the place that’s always challenging the theory of evolution. What’s next, gravity? Is that just a plot by the Jews up North to get people to drop spare change?

Southerners need to let go of the Civil War, beginning with those reenactments. First of all, you’re reenacting something you lost. It’s one thing to gloat about victory — when you do it about losing, your front porch is a few couches short of being decorated.

The time has come to move on. The time has come to consider voting for a Yankee. Howard Dean’s Vermont is no longer where carpetbaggers come from. Carpet munchers — yes.

There’s no good reason that America, at this late date, still needs to be a house divided. At bottom, we all want the same things: dignity, security — and someone to slap the shit out of Janet Jackson.

Barbie, a Jewish doll? Oh, I guess there’s some evidence of that — it’s true when you put Ken on top of her she just lies there. But maybe that’s because Ken is gay, which probably doesn’t go over well in Mecca either. Guys, if you’re worried that Barbie is offensive, you have no idea how offensive to Islam we can be. We’ve got Christians, Jews, lesbians, pork chops, ass-less chaps, loud music — and that’s just at a restaurant in West Hollywood.

The truth is, the Saudis and the terrorists who extort their support at our expense, are all about the purity of the seventh century until it suits their needs. If the West is so tainted, why don’t you stop using our technology?

This week Osama bin Laden put out a new videotape. Guess who invented videotape? Not anybody named Abu. Same goes for satellite phones, computers, SUVs, and everything else the terrorists use to hatch their evil plans — they were all invented by the infidels. Their last new idea was something about stonings at night, when it’s cooler. I don’t know where Osama’s hiding, but I do know one place he’s never been — the patent office. So don’t claim you’re rejecting the West when you’re using our technology. Go back to homing pigeons and camels, and those big curved swords. Because if there’s anything more annoying than an evildoer, it’s a hypocritical evildoer.

I know it’s the summer, but still: I went to see “Bad Boys II” and the THX “Quiet, the audience is listening” trailer had a more believable plot. Movies used to come from novels; now they come from video games. But it didn’t used to be like this.

When I was 12 years old, Hollywood didn’t give a damn about me — and that was good! Good for the movies and good for me because I was challenged to stretch — to smarten up instead of dumb down. Besides ruining movies, we’ve ruined our kids by making everything about them, and now if I want to see a movie I had better like loud noises, things blowing up and Colin Farrell.

Movies suck because Hollywood figured out that Mom and Dad don’t spend their money on movies anymore, they give their money to their kids and they spend it on movies — to break up their shopping spree at the mall. It’s like American parents are on one long date with their kids — no, it’s even worse, it’s like Robert DeNiro in “Casino,” helplessly trying to buy the love of a shopaholic hooker with no heart, played of course by Sharon Stone.

Before I die, could someone please make one more movie I want to go out and see? I’m not asking for the moon here, and I’m not some film snob with a ponytail who only likes subtitled Albanian documentaries. But to middle-aged people like myself, a good movie is like good sex — you don’t have to put one out every day — but when whole seasons go by, you do get a little horny for entertainment.

The joke here is on white America, which always felt superior to blacks and showed that with their feet, moving out of urban areas: “White flight” they called it. Whites feared blacks; they feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks would turn their daughters into dope fiends and prostitutes — and now through the miracle of MTV, damned if it didn’t work out that way!

You see, MTV is where Snoop and Jay-Z and 50 Cent tell their stories — that’s what rap is, telling your stories — the stories of their youth, and being poor blacks. Pimps and drug dealers were the only role models they had. And now that whole worldview is all up in your kid’s Kool-Aid!

Little boys want a chocolate mama with a huge ass, and the girls in the suburbs apparently have accepted being a ho as just another hip lifestyle choice. So if you take your kid to the mall this Christmas and she climbs into Santa’s lap face first, you should look into it. And remind your little princess, if a young woman must exchange sex for material goods, they should do it the accepted way: through the sanctity of marriage.